The networked young citizen: social media, political participation and civic engagement

This collection, comprising contributions from a number of leading international scholars in this field, examines themes of the influence of social media, such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, upon the participatory culture of young citizens, as the possible effects of social media use upon patterns of political socialization; the potential of social media to ameliorate young people’s political inequality; the role of social media communications for enhancing the civic education curriculum; and evidence for social media manifesting new forms of political engagement and participation by young citizens.

These issues are considered from a number of theoretical and methodological approaches but all attempt to move beyond simplistic notions of young people as an undifferentiated category of ‘the internet generation’.